


hold me in this wild, wild world

by zach_stone



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Angst, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Sad with a Happy Ending, Someone Give Hermann A Hug 2k18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 11:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14693784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zach_stone/pseuds/zach_stone
Summary: Hermann didn’t often allow himself to cry. Humanity was barreling towards the end of days, and he simply didn’t have time to fall to pieces, not when people needed him — needed his work. But four rangers had died. He decided he could allow himself one small moment of grief.--Or, some Hermann-centric hurt/comfort because I just want to give him a hug. Set pre-canon.





	hold me in this wild, wild world

**Author's Note:**

> every day i have a conversation with [mousse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse) and then end up writing a fic about it. anyway, i wanted to read more h/c where hermann is the one being comforted and tbh i meant to write something post-uprising, but then this idea came to me and i ran with it instead. fair warning, i made myself cry writing this bc i am a sensitive bitch. i hope you enjoy! 
> 
> title from "warmth" by bastille. fun fact, the album "wild world" is really just a newmann concept album. it's the Truth.

Hermann jerked violently into consciousness with a strangled yell that got caught somewhere between his throat and his mouth. His heart was hammering, the vestiges of his nightmare already slipping from his mind’s eye as he panted, one hand to his chest, trying to orient himself.

He was on the couch in the lab. The only light on was the one on his desk. He had a vague memory of stripping down to his undershirt and slacks, stumbling over to the couch to rest his eyes for just a moment — he must have fallen asleep. Well, he supposed he wasn’t surprised. He’d been in the lab for somewhere around 30 hours, and that was a conservative estimation. It had been a… difficult couple of days. Weeks. Years, really.

The most recent kaiju attack had been the biggest and fiercest yet, but then they always seemed to outdo themselves. The casualties this go around had been worse than usual. Two jaegers were destroyed before a third had finally torn the head off the beast. Four rangers, gone. Hermann had been in the room when both pairs went down, watched their lives blink out on Tendo’s screen as their screaming voices over the comms abruptly cut off. He supposed that’s what he’d been dreaming about, but it didn’t much matter if he remembered or not. What good did it do to dwell on nightmares when his waking hours were so much worse?

Hermann sat up fully on the couch, feeling his throat tighten. He didn’t often allow himself to cry. Humanity was barreling towards the end of days, and he simply didn’t have time to fall to pieces, not when people needed him — needed his work. But four rangers had died. Four people he saw nearly every day, nodded to and smiled awkwardly at in the mess hall, four people who had put their lives and their trust in the jaegers he helped to program. Four people whose deaths he couldn’t help but feel responsible for, working late into the night after Newton left the lab, searching desperately for anything he could have done better, any mistake he could correct for next time.

Yes, it had been a difficult day.

His breath hitched on the inhale, and the exhale was more of a whimper, and Hermann decided he could allow himself one small moment of grief. As the tears came, he curled in on himself, arms wrapping around his middle and clutching his ribs like he could stifle the ache threatening to crack his very bones. He cried quietly, at least, though there was no one around to hear him. He would retain this one modicum of dignity.

Abruptly, the overhead lights of the lab clicked on, and Hermann’s head shot up, staring wildly around until his gaze locked on Newton, standing in the doorway. He was in his pajamas and a threadbare robe, hair wild from sleep.

“Hermann?” he said. “What the hell are you still doing in here, I thought you went to bed hours ago!” Then he seemed to fully process the situation he’d walked in on, and his expression fell into one of muted horror.

Hermann knew how he must look, eyes wide and red-rimmed, tears sticky on his cheeks. He was also fairly certain he could feel snot on his upper lip. And he was still hugging himself like a child. God, he was humiliated. “Yes, I, ah, I must have just dozed off,” he said quickly, wiping at his eyes with his fingertips and wincing at the shaky quality of his voice. Before he could say anything else, Newton was striding across the lab and dropping down next to him on the couch, clearly concerned.

“Whoa, whoa, hey. Are you okay?” Newton asked. His hand lifted as if to touch Hermann’s shoulder, but he pulled back at the last minute. Hermann found himself wishing that he hadn’t.

“I’m fine,” Hermann muttered. “Really, it’s — it’s nothing, Newton, I simply had a nightmare.” He didn’t want to meet Newton’s gaze, which he could feel burning into the side of his head.

“Why are you still in here, man?” Newton asked again, softly.

The emotions Hermann had been working methodically to shove aside the moment Newton had walked into the room came bubbling back up to the surface, because how could he even _ask_ that, as if he didn’t know? As if he hadn’t also been in the room listening to those rangers die, his hand clenched in a knuckle-white grip on Tendo’s shoulder, for once rendered silent? “You know why,” Hermann said, his words catching in his throat. “This cannot keep happening, not on my watch. I have to — to be better. Work harder.”

“Hermann…” Newton said, and he sounded so soft and sad. And Hermann did look at him then, and the look on his face, like Hermann was breaking his heart, undid the last semblance of “fine” that Hermann had in him, and he started to cry again.

“Damn it,” he said under his breath, knuckling at one eye, and then Newton’s arm was around him, pulling him close. Maybe it was the exhaustion, or the fact that Hermann couldn’t honestly remember the last time someone had hugged him, but he didn’t fight it. In fact, he leaned into the embrace, resting his cheek on Newton’s shoulder, his hand coming up to grip the edge of the bathrobe against Newton’s chest. Newton rubbed his back with an unexpectedly gentle touch, and Hermann let himself cry and get snot on Newton’s robe. The thing was filthy anyway; he doubted Newton would mind.

Newton was making soft “shh” noises, his hand moving from Hermann’s back to rest at the nape of his neck, fingers brushing the fuzz of his undercut. Hermann felt Newton’s heartbeat under his hand and eventually his sobs subsided, turning into a few ragged inhales and then finally just slow, sniffly breaths. Newton didn’t remove his hand, and his fingers were cool and gentle on the back of Hermann’s neck. They’d never touched each other like this before. Hermann loosened his grip on the bathrobe and ran his thumb over the terrycloth material. They stayed like that for several long, quiet moments.

Predictably, Newton was the one to finally break it. “You know something?” he said. His voice was a bit rougher that Hermann anticipated, and he wondered suddenly if Newton had been crying, too. “I’m pretty sure you’re my best friend.”

Hermann sniffled again. “Yes,” he whispered. “And you are mine.” After more than a decade, how could he not be? There was no one else who knew him quite so well, no one else who he spent more of his time with. No one else who would come down to the lab in the middle of the night on a hunch, just to make sure he wasn’t sobbing all alone on a couch. Something was twisting inside Hermann’s stomach, and he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Trying for levity, he lifted his head to meet Newton’s (slightly teary) eyes and said, in his best attempt at deadpan, “How terribly unfortunate for us both.”

Newton laughed wetly, and then he slid his free hand to rest on top of Hermann’s, the one still clinging to his robe. “Not _that_ unfortunate,” he said. His thumb brushed over Hermann’s wrist. “I kinda think we make a good team, don’t you?”

“I suppose we do,” Hermann agreed faintly. There was that ache again — but it was a bit different this time. He felt like his ribs would crack under the weight of the unabashed affection in Newton’s gaze, the uncharacteristic gentleness of his touch, the closeness of his face to Hermann’s. The fact that he could look at him so tenderly when Hermann probably looked disgusting after weeping all over him for a good fifteen minutes. For a moment, so quick he nearly missed it, Newton’s gaze dropped to Hermann’s lips. Hermann’s heart stuttered in his chest.

But then the moment passed, Newton looking down and away. His heartbeat fluttered under Hermann’s hand. “So if we both agree on the whole team thing,” Newton said, his voice a little higher than usual, “you wanna stop trying to carry the weight of the damn world on your shoulders? You don’t have to, to fix this, you know.”

“Newton, it is my _job_ —” Hermann started to protest, but Newton cut him off.

“ _You_ don’t have to fix this,” he repeated. He looked back at Hermann and smiled slightly. “ _We_ do. Together, right? Come on, what would you do without the world’s most brilliant kaiju biologist by your side?”

“I perish the very thought,” Hermann said, returning Newton’s smile.

“Good,” Newton said. He removed his hand from the back of Hermann’s neck, and Hermann reluctantly leaned away from him. “Let’s get to bed, huh? I promise your chalkboards will still be here in the morning.”

“Yes, yes, fine,” Hermann agreed. He glanced around. “Do you see my —?”

“Got it,” Newton said. He scrabbled around with his foot to drag Hermann’s cane out from under the couch, then picked it up and passed it over. He hopped to his feet, offering a hand, but Hermann waved him away, easing himself up slowly and leaning heavily on his cane. Sleeping on the couch had been hell on his back, but he’d manage. He was something of an expert at managing pain.

They left the lab together, Newton clicking the lights back off as they went.

When they reached the door to Newton’s quarters, they both stood there looking at each other awkwardly. Hermann felt compelled to do something stupid, like clap Newton on the shoulder, and was about to act on the impulse when Newton grabbed his hand. At first Hermann thought he was _shaking_ _his_ _hand_ , which would have been even more ridiculous than what Hermann had been about to do considering the soul-bearing session they’d just had, but then he realized that Newton was instead just _holding_ his hand. And sort of squeezing it gently. Hermann returned the squeeze instinctively, and Newton smiled.

“Get some sleep, okay? I’m serious. Don’t go back into that lab ‘til the sun’s up,” Newton said.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Hermann retorted automatically. “But… I won’t. You need not worry about me, Dr. Geiszler.”

“‘Dr. Geiszler’…” Newton repeated under his breath, shaking his head. His smile turned rueful. “Alright then. Get outta here.” He dropped Hermann’s hand, and Hermann, unsure of what to do with his appendage now that Newton was no longer gripping it, clutched his cane with both hands and nodded.

“Good night, Newton,” he said faintly.

Newton unlocked his door, and shoved it open, turning to look at Hermann over his shoulder. “Night, Hermann.”

 

The next morning when Hermann arrived in the lab, Newton was already there and elbow-deep in a kaiju specimen. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence, nor was the fact that The Clash was blasting from the battered stereo Newton insisted on keeping directly in the middle of one of his operating tables. The coffee, waiting hot and fresh in a mug on Hermann’s desk, was also not an unusual occurrence, but something about it _felt_ different after last night. He couldn’t stop thinking about Newton’s hand in his, Newton’s gentle touch and kind eyes. Newton, who’d made him coffee every morning for the past five years.

Newton, who — and Hermann stopped dead in his tracks on his way to his chalkboards to observe this, coffee mug clutched in one hand and the other holding his cane in a death grip — had left a splattering of kaiju guts in the middle of the floor on Hermann’s side of the lab. He stared at the disgusting, slimy entrails for a moment, blinking rapidly, before he shouted, “Newton!”

“What’s up?” Newton asked, far too cheerful.

“What… is _this_ doing here?” Hermann hissed, jabbing at the air above the viscera with his cane.

“Ohhh,” Newton said. “Yeah, I dropped that when I was so _kindly_ bringing over your coffee.”

“Why on _Earth_ were you carrying —”

“Hey man, it was an accident, alright?”

“If you knew you’d dropped it, why wouldn’t you clean it up?!”

“I was _going_ to, eventually!”

“Oh, eventually! Terrific!” Hermann was infuriated, but for some reason he found he was also fighting back a smile. Newton wasn’t even attempting to hide his own grin, even as the two of them fell into their regular rhythm of mocking and snarking back and forth. These moments, Hermann realized, were nearly as much of a comfort to him as Newton’s touch had been the night before. Though he’d never say so, he rarely felt so alive as he did in the midst of his and Newton’s verbal sparring matches. Maybe he didn’t need to say it. He had a feeling Newton already knew.

Hermann thought to himself as he grabbed a piece of chalk and yelled at Newton over his shoulder, this is what he would continue to work and fight for. He’d very much like to continue arguing with Newton every day for a long, long time.

And perhaps hold his hand again, too.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, thanks for reading! leave a comment if u wanna, or hmu on twitter @queensuperjelly and tumblr @joshuawashinton if u wanna talk pacrim or anything else tbh, i love makin friends.


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